A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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NSA Redux

In his latest posting, my colleague Roger Pilon restates several of his arguments in defense of the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance. Each of Roger’s points has been addressed in detail in our recent debate and in my Senate testimony. For those who prefer a nutshell version of my response, here it is:

Roger asks, “How can Congress, by mere statute, restrict an inherent power of a co-equal branch of government …?” I do not dispute that the president has inherent powers, especially during wartime. The question is not the existence, but rather the scope, of those powers. And because Congress too has wartime powers, an express restriction by Congress, like the FISA statute, is persuasive when deciding whether the president has overreached.

Indeed, the Constitution specifically authorizes Congress to shape the president’s inherent powers. Article I, section 8 empowers Congress to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution … all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

If, as Roger insists, warrantless domestic surveillance is incidental to the president’s inherent powers, so too are sneak-and-peek searches, roving wiretaps, library records searches, and national security letters – all of which were vigorously debated in deciding whether to reauthorize the Patriot Act. Could the president have proceeded with those activities even if they were not authorized by Congress? If so, what was the purpose of the debate? Why do we even need a Patriot Act?

President Bush has also asserted “inherent powers” to justify military tribunals without congressional authorization, secret CIA prisons, indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, enemy combatant declarations without hearings as required by the Geneva Conventions, and interrogation techniques that may have violated our treaty commitments banning torture. Are those activities outside the president’s wartime authority? If not, what are the bounds, if any, that constrain his conduct?

The animating sentiment at the time of the founding was fear of executive power – return of the king. Against that backdrop, it’s remarkable that the president, with Roger’s apparent approval, now claims to wield unilateral powers with no safeguards – in effect, an irrebuttable presumption of authority, unfettered by Congress or the courts, to do just about anything that he pleases in battling terrorists.